Round One of the Southern Sweets Showdown rolls on with the 3-seeds versus the 14-seeds.

Our next matchup of those seeds comes from the Miscellany Region, pitting the #3 Fig Preserves against the woefully under-seeded #14 Raw Sugar Cane.

Image by sleepyneko via Flickr

Both of these treats were staples of my childhood. Growing up in suburban Mobile, Alabama, I never knew that the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables coming from our little subdivision plot on Three Notch Road was not the norm. Over the course of my childhood, my mother had managed to turn our back yard into a mini-farm, with a roughly 3,000 square-foot vegetable garden stretching along the back and fruit trees dotting the rest.

We grew our own pears, loquats (there’s a rare Southern delicacy worthy of its own post on RSM) blackberries, scuppernongs, blueberries, elderberries, figs and sugar cane.

The countless Mason jars filled to the brim with my mother’s fig preserves were a regular delight for me. We didn’t keep a lot of store-bought cookies and sweets in the house, so a piece of toast slathered with fig preserves was a delight. Now I have kids of my own, and we do usually have a handful of store-bought sweets on hand, but my son takes as much delight in his Grandmaw’s fig preserves as I ever did. Although, he prefers his on the side with a big, traditional breakfast … or by the spoonful, straight out of the jar.

Image via Wikipedia

As far as the sugar cane goes, you know my feelings about cane sugar as the sweetener of choice, as evidenced in my rhapsodic pining for Mexican Coke. But when you take that raw cane stalk, hack off a ten-inch length of it and start whittling back that husk to reveal the juicy, fibrous delight within …. there is nothing better. If you’ve never experienced the pure, decadent joy of gnawing off a mouthful of sugar cane and chewing it for what seems like an eternity, extracting every last bit of sugary goodness, then you don’t know what sweet really is.

For me, this particular match-up is a tough choice for sure. And I still don’t know how I will vote.

Assuming you’ve already made up your mind, head over to our Facebook page and decide who is more worthy to move on to the second round. Or simply take the poll below:

I’ve never dressed up the fig preserves for a party like that. We’ve always relegated them to the breakfast table or a simple snack. Clearly, I’ve put Baby in a corner. We’ll have to rectify that this holiday season.